ArticleSurgical case reports2025
Successful Conversion Surgery for Unresectable Microsatellite Instability-High Pancreatic Tail Cancer Following Pembrolizumab Therapy.
Article in Surgical case reports, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionPembrolizumab was approved for the treatment of microsatellite instability (MSI)-high pancreatic cancer that is unresponsive to systemic chemotherapy. However, pancreatic cancer has a low prevalence of MSI-high status (<1%). We report a rare case of MSI-high pancreatic tail cancer successfully treated with pembrolizumab, which enabled conversion surgery to be performed. CASE PRESENTATION: A 78-year-old male patient received the diagnosis of unresectable metastatic (UR-M) pancreatic tail cancer with para-aortic and anterior mediastinal lymph node metastases. Tests found high MSI due to the loss of MSH2 and MSH6 expression. Following 6 courses of pembrolizumab, he achieved a partial response. Pembrolizumab was discontinued after immune-related renal dysfunction developed during the 7th course. Fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography demonstrated decreased uptake in the anterior mediastinal and para-aortic lymph nodes, allowing a radical resection to be performed. The patient underwent a radical antegrade modular pancreatosplenectomy with a left adrenalectomy and para-aortic lymph node sampling. Currently, at postoperative month 6, he is alive and recurrence-free. The present case is an extremely rare instance of MSI-high, unresectable pancreatic cancer that was removed by curative resection after pembrolizumab therapy.
conclusionsThe present rare case of conversion surgery for MSI-high UR-M pancreatic tail cancer, achieving a pathological partial response after pembrolizumab treatment, highlights the potential of pembrolizumab against this specific molecular subtype of pancreatic cancer and underscores the clinical significance of proactively testing for MSI to identify candidates for immunotherapy and curative conversion surgery.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.